Gathering 2 (Thanks to the Alliance Leader for the reward)

If the information on Twist provided earlier was merely a basic template and foundational data for this identity, then those details were more akin to an introductory profile.

Now, however, the sections within those profiles concerning anatomy were being refined and detailed one after another.

Wang Yiyang could feel his hands rapidly becoming nimble and precise, steady and seasoned.

It was as if he had already used these very hands to dissect hundreds of different creatures.

This sensation was indescribable, yet undeniably real.

"Are you alright?" Lei Wei, standing nearby, saw him pause and hurriedly reached out to steady him.

From her perspective, the mysterious and ruthless Security Director of the group had just finished a minor surgery and stepped out, only to sway as if overcome by exhaustion.

Yet, this operation had clearly been the most routine of minor procedures...

Suppressing her confusion, Lei Wei carefully helped Wang Yiyang over to a metal chair to sit down.

It took a full ten minutes for Wang Yiyang to recover and clear his mind from the flood of anatomical imagery.

He felt his hands were in the best condition they had ever been in.

Compared to before, his original hands felt as if they had been shackled by heavy weights, clumsy and unbearable.

"I'm fine." Wang Yiyang finally grasped the true power of randomly acquiring an ability.

He looked down at his hands, suddenly feeling even more anticipation for the various new identities to come.

Indeed, the permanent accumulation of various identities might bring more trouble.

But I can simply prioritize the strongest identities, rely on them to quickly resolve the troubles brought by others, and then acquire their abilities. Just like this.

Wang Yiyang's thoughts became clear.

I only need to choose the identities most useful to me. As for the useless ones, once I resolve their troubles and extract their abilities, I can cast them aside and ignore them entirely.

With his mindset clarified, he felt much more relaxed about this suddenly acquired system.

Previously, he had been worried that if he couldn't resolve the troubles brought by a new identity within the allotted time, wouldn't the troubles just keep piling up?

"Wait??" Wang Yiyang suddenly froze. When he was performing the surgery just now, he hadn't felt any trouble associated with the identity of Twist at all.

If performing a simple surgical procedure counted as "trouble," then the Anatomy Mastery ability had been obtained far too easily.

Looking at it this way, there are two possibilities.

One, I haven't encountered the trouble associated with Twist yet.

Two, this identity has no other trouble at all.

Wang Yiyang shifted his gaze back to the data information in the bottom right corner of his vision.

Suddenly, he recalled his hands trembling violently while on the operating table earlier.

Logically speaking, even when he was cooking, his hands had never shaken that badly.

Yet today, the moment he stepped up to the operating table and began to cut, he felt his hands shaking uncontrollably.

Perhaps this was the greatest trouble Twist faced. For a surgeon, hands that are no longer steady lead to devastating consequences. Wang Yiyang suddenly realized.

Having formed a hypothesis, Wang Yiyang changed his clothes and, led by Lei Wei, left the hospital.

They got into the car, and it had barely moved a few meters when the phone rang abruptly.

Beep... beep...

Wang Yiyang pulled out his phone and pressed answer.

"Catherine?" The caller was Catherine Chali, the team leader in charge of the Yuekong Martial Arts Hall in Guixi Town.

"Boss, some changes have occurred here that may require your personal decision," Catherine said, her tone grave.

"What kind of changes?" Wang Yiyang's gaze sharpened.

"It concerns Zhong Can, a member of the martial arts hall. It has nothing to do with Wang Xinlong."

Unlike Jian, Catherine was a very cautious and meticulous person. While she might lack decisiveness in handling certain matters, she rarely made major mistakes.

This was the reason Wang Yiyang had chosen her to monitor the situation regarding his grandfather.

"What happened?" Hearing that it had nothing to do with his grandfather, Wang Yiyang felt a slight sense of relief, but he listened intently to the voice on the other end of the line.

"Between four and five o'clock this morning, dark figures approached the riverbank near the Yuekong Martial Arts Hall.

There were six figures in total. After they quietly made contact with Zhong Can, who was practicing early, a dispute seemed to break out between both sides.

Zhong Can then swiftly killed all of them within sixteen seconds and left.

Five minutes later, new dark figures approached, cleaned up all the bodies, and carried them away."

Catherine gave a brief account of what happened last night.

"Can you identify who those shadows were?" Wang Yiyang pressed.

"It's difficult. They moved very quickly, and they were even faster carrying the bodies than we were while tracking them. Judging by their conduct, they appear to be martial artists. And they were all wearing masks," Catherine replied.

"Martial artists..." Wang Yiyang fell into thought. However, he quickly snapped back to reality.

"Continue monitoring the Yuekong Martial Arts Hall. Ensure Wang Xinlong's personal safety at all costs. As for Zhong Can, continue to wait and see."

"Understood."

The call ended.

Wang Yiyang flexed his steady, precise fingers and remained silent for a moment.

"Go straight to Yahelian."

"Yes," Bodyguard No. 1, who was driving, responded in a deep voice.

Guixi Town.

It was high noon.

Inside the Yuekong Martial Arts Hall, Wang Xinlong was reclining on a lounge chair in the living room, covered by a thin blanket, watching a TV drama.

In the kitchen, the nanny was washing fresh cured meat that someone had just delivered.

Two of Wang Xinlong's disciples were practicing sparring in the courtyard, stopping occasionally to discuss their moves.

Zhong Can sat alone by the door of his room, where a wooden chair belonged exclusively to him.

Beside the wooden chair sat an unused stone mill. The greyish-white millstone and the yellow wooden handle seemed to hold his gaze as if they were some peerless treasure.

The sun was bright in the courtyard, but the temperature remained low.

People outside were all wearing warm clothing, yet Zhong Can wore only a T-shirt and casual trousers.

Beneath his greyish-white clothes, the outline of his sturdy, tall physique was faintly visible.

Beep-beep.

Suddenly, his phone chimed with a text message.

Zhong Can slowly shifted his gaze to the phone.

Beep-beep... beep-beep... beep-beep...

The phone vibrated incessantly, as if it had gone mad, receiving a barrage of text messages.

Zhong Can stared at the phone for a while, as if only just snapping out of a trance.

He picked up the phone, unlocked it, and glanced at the screen.

'You regret it?!'

'Why did you kill the person sent to assist you!?'

'Zhong Can, you should know who gave you the key to breaking your limits! It wasn't Wang Xinlong, it was us!'

'You should understand, we can create you, and we can destroy you!'

'I can overlook the person you killed, and we don't have to seek the secret techniques of the Yuekong Martial Arts Hall, but if you want to break away, you had better consider the consequences!'

'Or perhaps you've gone soft? The Yuekong Martial Arts Hall will only become a stumbling block to your progress. Either move it aside or destroy it. You have no choice!'

Zhong Can looked at the messages one by one, his expression blank, then locked the phone again and tossed it aside carelessly.

He stood up, glanced at the elderly Wang Xinlong watching TV in the hall, then silently walked out of the martial arts hall and stood still on the riverbank. He began to practice the Moon Sky Fist that Wang Xinlong had taught him, over and over again.

As the signature martial art of the hall, the Moon Sky Fist consisted of two major parts: the Dynamic Fist and the Static Fist.

The Dynamic Fist was used to deal with long-range attacks like firearms. Its core principle was to use high-speed changes in position and movement to prevent the enemy from locking onto a target, thereby closing the distance during the opponent's hesitation to defeat them in one strike.

The Static Fist, on the other hand, was for dealing with close-quarters combat experts who were also skilled in martial arts.

The so-called Static Fist actually borrowed a concept.

This "static" was not truly still, but rather...

Snap.

Zhong Can kicked up a pebble with his foot, letting it fly into the air.

Then, he held his right hand out level.

The pebble drifted gently past his hand.

In an instant, his right fingertips traced blurred trajectories in mid-air.

Within a mere second, his right hand darted around the pebble in the air.

His fingertips struck different parts of the pebble simultaneously in an extremely short span of time.

Swish, swish, swish, swish!

His palm retracted in an instant, as if it had never moved at all.

The pebble fell naturally with gravity, hitting the riverbank with a thwack, and then, it shattered.

In that fleeting second, the oval pebble had been pierced through its core by a heavy, concentrated force.

So much so that while it appeared intact on the outside as it fell, the interior had long since been torn asunder.

Zhong Can lowered his head to gaze at the pebble, watching the stone dust spill from the fractured surfaces.

He had already been capable of this a year ago.

A year later, he was still standing in the same spot.

He firmly believed that Wang Xinlong was still hiding a final secret technique, one he had not yet passed on to him.

That was why he had been waiting.

But now, he seemed to be losing his patience.

Yahe Lian Self-Defense Training Center.

In a massive venue resembling a gymnasium, on black and white striped plastic mats, hundreds of men and women stood in rows. Under the guidance of several coaches in black T-shirts and shorts, they were continuously performing knee raises, side kicks, knee raises, and front thrust kicks.

The rhythmic shouts rang out, one after another.

The center's head coach, He Xinghan, a Glimmer-ranked martial artist of the Martial Alliance, was walking slowly past the right side of the training area, dressed in a suit and tie, leading Wang Yiyang and his entourage.

He Xinghan was fifty-three years old and had long since passed the peak explosive period of a martial artist.

Outwardly, he was thick-waisted and sturdy-legged with a slight paunch, always wearing a genial smile and sporting a flat-top haircut like a broom; he looked nothing like a practitioner of martial arts.

In truth, he was quite puzzled, unsure of the purpose behind the Mister Group's sudden visit to his training center.

While many companies sought them out to collaborate on basic self-defense training for their employees, those were usually small businesses.

A multinational conglomerate like Mister Group possessed its own security department.

Given their scale, they certainly maintained their own security teams, which would surely not lack instructors for self-defense.

With that as a premise, it was hard to say what the objective of these two Mister Group representatives was.

Especially given the combination of the two: a man who looked no older than thirty and a similarly young, beautiful assistant.

They looked more like second-generation heirs out for a stroll than anything else.

"This is the training center's regular practice area. Occasionally, when the city hosts competitions, they might borrow our venue as well. So, in Yingxing City, our training center is second to none in terms of strength," He Xinghan introduced.

Wang Yiyang nodded.

"I'm not interested in that," he said directly. "In fact, I came here because I am interested in Limit Martial Artists, and I would like to learn a thing or two about their practical destructive power and lethality."